


Spider Bites

by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee



Series: Son of a Spider [3]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awesome Natasha Romanov, Clintasha - Freeform, F/M, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Found Family, Gen, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Natasha Romanov-centric, POV Natasha Romanov, Parent Natasha Romanov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 09:30:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5823388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee/pseuds/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of ficlets and shorts focusing on Natasha in 'Son of a Spider' AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Love is a 4-Letter Word

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place around the middle of chapter 4 of 'Come on Home', after Natasha and Clint have gotten to know each other and have started to dance around the idea of a relationship. 
> 
> The quotes in italics at the beginning and end of the chapter are from the song 'Do You Love Me?' from the musical 'Fiddler on the Roof'.

**Love is a 4-Letter Word**

_“ ~I’ve lived with him, fought with him, starved with him~ ”_

            Natasha wasn’t sure where Clint had learned to fly or why Nick Fury trusted him to return a jet in one piece but not to cook in the communal kitchens without burning down the base. She supposed there must be some sort of story there. She supposed she could ask, or she could just wait for Clint to tell her. Like as not, he would. For a deaf man he liked to talk a great deal, as if he were attempting to compensate for the silence all around him by filling up the void with fruitless sentences, pointless, silly words. Words like candy, unnecessary and sweet. Natasha found herself wanting to hoard them like a small child’s stash of Halloween loot, to be savored in the dark winter months, bright spots of color and spun sugar.

            She didn’t tell Clint this.

            He probably knew anyway.

            Matt certainly did. Her son had taken to observing the two of them with his head tipped to the side, listening to what they said and what they didn’t say with a small, knowing smile curling at the corners of his lips.

            That boy was too much like her sometimes.

            Matt liked his secrets. He liked other people’s secrets. He liked knowing things, storing up all that information like a squirrel on the edge of starvation. It was all about control, after all. Knowing everything there was to know about every variable kept you safe, secure, in control.

            Natasha wondered if she needed to teach him how to trust. Natasha wondered if she should. Either way she wasn’t the right person for the job. She looked over to the man in the pilot’s chair. Clint leaned back, casual in his seat, keeping the plane on course for home as dawn streaked the clouds with gold around them. Clint loved her. She knew he did. Or he thought he did.

            Natasha…wanted…something. Clarity, perhaps. She didn’t know how to feel the feelings that seemed to be crowding in all around her, creeping up on all sides. It had been one thing when it was just Matt, so much like her but with so much potential to be _better_. Now, with Clint…

            Natasha didn’t know. And she didn’t like not knowing.

            Clint had asked her a question, hours ago now. At the beginning of the flight, guaranteeing her six hours without an escape. And now he sat, ever so casual, piloting the plane. Waiting. For her.

            _Do you love me?_

            “Define love for me.” She said into the stillness.

            “Hmm?” He tipped his head to the side, considering. Clint wore the gesture differently than Matt. When Matt did it, he was like a cat, listening, poised for a leap. When Clint did it, he was like a dog, and it was an easy, lolling motion.

            “I do not think I am capable of feeling love. So, define it for me.” Her voice was dry, but there was a sharp challenge hidden in the soft syllables.

            Clint snorted, “BS. Everyone can feel love. Even psychopaths can feel love. And you’re not even a psychopath, so I don’t know what you’re worried about.” He gave her a crooked smile, but it seemed almost…strained.

            “I do not think I have the capacity. I think it was cut out of me years ago,” her voice was hard and sharp, but the edges weren’t cutting him, they were just ripping her up inside, “So prove me wrong. Define love.”

            Clint sighed, “Nat, love is… Okay, you know when you see something really, really, completely, amazingly, awesomely, incredible? Something that just…shakes you up and changes your world permanently? And you just want to share it with someone? And not just because you think it’d be something you think _they_ would like; but because it’s something that moved _you_ ; that took _your_ breath away, and you just want someone to feel it with you too?”

            Natasha nodded, the gesture abbreviated and uncertain.

            “Okay, so when you see or find that really amazing thing you just have to share; who’s on your list? Who’re the first people you want to share that with?”

            Natasha raised an eyebrow, “Is this rhetorical?”

            “Nope. I’ve just arbitrarily designated this as the Zone of Truth. Spill. All your secrets. You have twenty seconds. And I don’t want any crappy secrets about government spies and weapons programs, just the juicy gossip.” He grinned at her, unrepentant.

            Natasha huffed a laugh and gave him a Mona Lisa smile. “Then Matt. You and Matt. That’s my list.”

            “See? That means you love us. Which I already knew. So. There you go.”

            Natasha shook her head, “That’s completely arbitrary.”

            Clint shrugged, unbothered, “Then go out and find your own definition of love. That’s the one I’ve got. And I kind of like it. It covers all the bases, all the types of love. Family, friends, partners, everything.”

            “Partners?” Natasha arched and eyebrow at him.

            “Yeah, partners.” He grinned at her. “By the way, you’re on my list too.”

            “Really?”

            “Right at the top. Along with your crazy parkour-ing baby ninja.”

            Natasha hummed lightly, “Family?”

            “Yeah, partner. We’re a family. A real family. With love and everything.”

            “With love and everything,” Natasha murmured with a soft, strange smile. She wasn’t sure if she believed Clint or not, but when he reached over and took her hand with callous-rough fingertips and dropped a soft kiss first on her knuckles, then on her palm, then on the soft skin inside her wrist, she smiled at him. And together they flew home.

_“ ~ If that’s not love, what is? ~ ”_


	2. Present Perfect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place between chapters 2 and 3 of 'Come on Home', after Matt and Natasha have become acquainted with Father Lantom, but before Clint drops into their lives.

**Present Perfect**

“Why hello, my child, what brings you here?” Father Lantom blinked owlishly at her and Natasha huffed an almost-laugh.

            “No need to play the doddering old priest for me, Father.”

            He drew himself sharply in mock-indignation. “Well I would certainly hope not as I am neither doddering nor _old_ quite yet, Ms. Romanov.”

            She pursed her lips and arched her eyebrows at him and he laughed, wrinkles bunching up at the corners of his bright eyes. “Well, whatever you’ve come for, and that box you’re holding certainly indicates some sort of intent, come in out of the cold, Natasha.”

            She quirked an eyebrow at him, “Symbolic language, father?”

            “An accidental metaphor, I assure you. Although I’m sure I could build a good sermon around the idea of ‘coming in from the cold’, especially if the weather keeps behaving so unreasonably.”

            “Perhaps you could convince Jack Frost to come in for confession,” Natasha offered dryly.

            “Oh no, I’d rather he’d stay outside when all’s said and done. We’re all God’s children, but I’d rather we all stayed in our natural habitats. Mine is of course, a well-heated building with a splendid fireplace.”

            Natasha chuckled at his cheery good humor. Father Lantom tended to bring out the best in people.

            “So, what brings you to my doorstep in the middle of the day, Natasha? Even the most devout tend to steer clear of church at 1pm on a Wednesday.”

            “Would it be possible for me to use your kitchen?”

            He caught her phrasing, of course he did, he was trained for this sort of thing. But he did her the kindness of not commenting. Natasha was well aware of how difficult she found asking for anything that sounded remotely like help. Luckily there was almost always some sort of linguistic work-around to be had. Any resulting awkward sentence structure could always be blamed on her childhood in Russia, if she were the kind of person who used excuses.

            “Of course, the church kitchen is always open to all members of the congregation, so long as they bring their own supplies,” He nodded to her box of baking ingredients, “Which it would appear you remembered to include.”

            “Of course.”

            “Then I’ll lead the way.”

…

            She’d expected him to leave once she was set up downstairs in the church kitchen, but the priest lingered, sipping hot chocolate (Natasha had declined a mug when asked) and watching her as she set out bowls, baking sheets and the basics for gingerbread.

            “Any reason you’re doing this here instead of at home?” he asked conversationally and Natasha froze where she’d been measuring out sugar.

            She weighed her options and decided on the most truthful of the bunch, “I’m trying a new recipe.” There, the Father could infer what he liked from that.

            “Really? Very interesting, of course, but you didn’t answer my question, did you?”

            She arched her eyebrows at him and he stared back with an innocent expression and a clever glint in his eyes.

            “I try not to experiment too much in the kitchen at home. Matt can always smell when a recipe has gone wrong in the last twenty-four hours.” Or forty-eight. But who was counting? “His other senses try to compensate for his vision. He has a keen sense of smell.” Understatement of the year, of course, but half-truths were the bricks of Natasha’s life and the words their mortar.

            “And you don’t like Matt to know when you’ve failed.”

            Natasha stiffened against her will.

            The priest nodded, not unkindly, and it grated on her nerves. “You don’t like to fail.”

            “No one does. It doesn’t mean I’m any more sensitive to it,” she clipped off each word sharply and tidily; measuring ingredients with crisp, smooth efficiency.

            “No, you don’t like people to know that you have ever done anything less than completely perfectly. You’re here because this is a place for you to experiment without your preteen son knowing when exactly you’ve messed up. When you’ve failed. You’d probably kick _me_ out of this room if you weren’t averse to using force on an old priest like me.”

            “True.”

            Father Lantom let her be for a bit, allowing her to work in tightly controlled peace. “Shall I leave or shall I pitch in?” he offered, “Since this is a test batch, I don’t suppose you’d be averse to sharing the fruits of our labor?”

            Natasha arched a brow at him, not sure what to make of this strange, mellow man and his core of steel. Oh yes, she could see it, in the way he carried himself, in the way he carried his congregations’ burdens for them.

            “Alright,” she conceded, “Take this spoon. Follow the directions precisely.”

            “Splendid. That way if it’s a complete disaster then obviously it’s the recipe’s fault,” he said lightly, beaming at her when she shot him a look.

            They worked in silence rich in spicy, wintertime scents for a few moments before Father Lantom said, almost casually, “You are doing a very good job with that boy. You have nothing to fear, my child. You are an excellent mother. You won’t fail him.”

            Natasha did not respond beyond a soft, detached hum. But the Father seemed to know she was listening, if his bright, quiet smile was anything to go by.

_  
_


	3. 1,000 Unnecessary Words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place around the same time as Matt's freshman year of undergrad.

**1,000 Unnecessary Words**

            Natasha knew about Clint’s desk photo, the one of her and Matt. She almost wished she could have one like it. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to leave something like that out in the open. The heart of her sitting there on a desk, there to be seen, the idea made her skin crawl with a thousand theoretical dangers.  

            Keeping pictures on her phone was also out of the question. She went through phones and phone numbers on an almost yearly basis, storing anything long-term on such a replaceable piece of electronics seemed foolish. Not to mention dangerous. Family photos would be damming indeed if her photo was confiscated on an op.

            So she kept her family photos elsewhere. Tucked into her sock drawer, nestled in the pages of a book sitting on the coffee table, slipped into her personal wallet, the one she only used when she was not working. They spelled out her family’s life in phases. A Polaroid she’d snapped of Matt when he was young, before she adopted him, when she was just his friend and he was just a child, brilliant with potential, sharp with spirit tempered by pain. A snapshot of Clint on Christmas morning when Matt was 14, the archer surrounded by a sea of shredded wrapping paper, an outrageous purple gift bow listing drunkenly on his dark blonde hair. Clint and a 16-year-old Matt sitting on the roof, feet hanging over the edge, the rising sun dragging their shadows out behind their backs. She’d snuck up on them to take that picture. Neither of their faces were completely visible, but there’s a quiet sort of beauty in the two of them sitting there like blackbirds on a wire.

            She’s never told anyone which one of her photos is her favorite, and she never will. A simple shot, a little blurry at the edges from where Phil jostled the camera. It’s the night of her and Clint’s ‘wedding’ (paperwork at SHIELD and a party at the apartment that featured only their immediate family, Phil, Fury, and a few other SHIELD agents Clint had befriended). The party had wound down and Matt, so young, barely teenaged and nowhere near grownup, sat on the couch, slumped against his new stepfather’s shoulder as Clint, worn out from the mission the day before and the festivities of the day dozed with his face half mashed into the upholstery. Matt’s eyes were thin hazel slivers, the boy not really awake and not really asleep. Behind the couch, hovering over them like a benediction; was Natasha. Phil, quick with his camera phone and perfectly willing to take advantage of his subjects’ distraction, caught her just as she leaned down and pressed a kiss to Clint’s forehead while one of her hands smoothed Matt’s hair out of his eyes.

            It was sweet. It was simple. It was perfect.

            No other words were necessary.

_  
_


	4. Bait and Switch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place towards the beginning of chapter 4 of 'Come on Home', after Clint has been accepted into the family, but before he and Natasha begin a romantic relationship.

**Bait and Switch**

            The apartment was trashed and Natasha was seeing red. Her heartbeat roared in her ears, a relentless drumbeat of sound thundering, shuddering through her body even as her thoughts slowed and cooled to glacial temperatures, assessing, planning, ticking off a thousand executive decisions, already planning her next move. Clint was in Eastern Europe. He was flying back but not fast enough, not fast enough.

            _Matt, Matt, my son, my son, where is my son? Matt._

            A sudden scraping, thudding sound and Natasha was already spinning, gun in hand. An intruder, she would dispatch them and continue combing the apartment for clues and then she’d begin the hunt –

            “Mom?”

            Natasha halted her spin, lowered her weapon and rose to her full height at the sight of Matt, her son…crawling through the window?

            She muttered something in Russian, not sure what the words were, not sure what was happening now.

            “Mom?” Matt’s voice was less certain this time, “Mom? I’m pretty sure I can hear your heartbeat, but if you’re not my mom and you’re just another thug, please leave me alone, this whole thing is incredibly stupid.”

            “Polygraph?” Natasha’s voice didn’t sound different, but it felt different, like the word was yanked out of her throat, scraping it raw.

            “Mom!” Matt beamed at her, bright and sharp and spattered with blood and filth, but _here._

            “Matt, what happened here?” She approached him slowly, reaching out and wrapping her fingers around the hand he held out to her. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, several small cuts fanned out from beneath his eye, suggesting the sunglasses had broken at some point, “We received,” she swallowed, her throat was tight and she wasn’t supposed to feel these feelings and she wasn’t sure what to do with them, but here was her _son_ , alive, in one piece and _home_ , “a ransom message at SHIELD. They said they’d taken you.”

            He shrugged, ambivalent. “They tried. I don’t think they were expecting me, though.”

            Natasha pressed her lips together, bit down on the shaky laugh building in her throat and swallowed it down. “What did you do?”

            “Crawled out on the fire escape and climbed up to the roof. Lost most of them on the roofs, doubled back through and alley, up to a roof and dropped down on top of the leftovers. Took care of them, made sure the ones I’d lost stayed lost or stayed out of commission, then I climbed up on top of one of the electric billboards down the street and waited. I figured the glow from the billboard would mostly camouflage me and it’s not very accessible or for people bigger than me. Then I heard your heartbeat and I followed it home.” Matt’s fingers were shaking a little in her grip and his voice was shivering a bit on the last few sentences.

            “Oh Polygraph,” she murmured, “You brilliant, brilliant child,” she dragged her son into a hug and didn’t comment when the 13-year-old wrapped his arms around her and clung like a small child after a nightmare, “You remembered everything I taught you.”

            “Yeah. I’m glad you’re okay. When they came to get me thought that maybe…you and Clint…weren’t coming home.”

            “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, “We’re always coming home.”

            Silence as they stood together and just hung on.

            “Natasha?” Matt said, “I’m really good at what you taught me. Really, really good. And it was…exhilarating, beating them down.”

            “Of course it was. It always is.”

            “Really?”

            “Yes. When you’re not scared for your life you’re reveling in your victory. That’s war.”

            “I think I have the devil in me too.”

            “We all do, Matt. Some just have more than others,” she sighed, “I’m just glad you’re safe. I am very proud of you.”

            “Thank you.” He gave her one last squeeze and pulled away. She let him go. “Um, we should probably let Clint know I’m okay,” he said, combing his fingers through his hair and wincing as the shallow cuts on his face reopened, oozing a steady, sluggish drip of blood. “Well, mostly okay,” he acknowledged.

            “Yes,” Natasha nodded, surveying the damage done to their apartment. “While you’re getting cleaned up at medical I’ll contact him.”

            “Thanks.”

            “No need to thank me, Polygraph,” she said with a smile that was only slightly shaken. “Now, let’s go. I want to get this over with so we can go furniture shopping before the stores close. This place looks like a disaster. At least the chair and sofa are salvageable.”

            Matt laughed and followed her out the door.


End file.
